The two multinational climate change meetings scheduled for this
week offer a stark contrast for addressing the issue of global
warming. Both meetings are intended to serve as preparatory
discussions for international efforts to address climate change,
including the December meeting of the Parties to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali. On September 24,
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will host "The Future in our
Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change." The
meeting, to be attended by more than 70 heads of state, is expected
to set the stage for a post-Kyoto Protocol multilateral agreement
establishing binding emissions targets along with discussions on
"adaptation, mitigation, clean technologies, deforestation and
resource mobilization."[1]

On September 27-28, the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security
and Climate Change, initiated by President Bush several months ago,
will bring together the world's major emitters of greenhouse gases
to discuss future national goals. The Bush Administration favors
voluntary emissions reductions supplemented by technological
innovation, which differs from the binding international targets
and regulation exemplified by the failed Kyoto Protocol. The
Administration's approach offers a more promising means for
creating a rational and workable climate policy.

The Ineffectual U.N. Approach to Climate
Change
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the key multilateral treaty to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, establishes a cap-and-trade approach
under which participating developed nations must meet emissions
reduction goals for the 2008-2012 compliance period. Developing
nations like China, India, and Brazil are not required to reduce
their emissions. The United States has chosen not to be party,
citing potential economic damage from compliance as well as the
exemptions granted to developing nations that are major emitters of
greenhouse gases.

The Kyoto Protocol is proving to be a failure. Most of the major
Kyoto parties that pledged to reduce their emissions-namely Western
Europe, plus Canada and Japan-are not on track to meet their
reduction goals. Indeed, nearly every country that pledged to
reduce emissions under Kyoto actually has higher emissions today
than when the treaty was first signed. Further, despite ongoing
criticism of the United States from Kyoto parties, emissions in
many of these nations are rising faster than in the United States.
Largely ignored is the fact that emissions from developing nations,
which are not restricted under Kyoto, are the world's
fastest-growing source of greenhouse gases. Particularly egregious
is the exemption of China, which is on the verge of overtaking
America as the world's largest emitter.

Despite the near impossibility of meeting current targets, many
European nations are proposing far stricter post-2012 goals at the
U.N. Climate Change Conference in December. However, this meeting
is shaping up to be little more than a charade-making bold promises
for the future in order to mask the failure of current emissions
targets.

The Administration recognizes that it is time to move beyond
Kyoto. Ahead of the last major G-8 summit in Germany last June,
President Bush announced a separate process, outside of Kyoto, to
bring together the United States and 15 other major emitting
nations, both developed and developing, plus representatives from
the European Union and the United Nations.[2] Unlike Kyoto, this process
would not end in a multilateral agreement with legally binding
caps, but would more closely resemble what the United States is
already doing in setting more flexible "aspirational" goals. Each
nation would work towards its own goals and fashion its own
compliance mechanism. The Major Economies Meeting on Energy
Security and Climate Change will be the first step in formalizing
this process.

In concert with this process, the Administration has also
spearheaded the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and
Climate, an agreement by which both developed and developing
nations can coordinate the creation and deployment of clean
technologies. It is a growth-based approach that actively engages
the critically important developing economies of China and India as
well as America, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. This is a far
more flexible and workable approach than Kyoto. Rather than
ratcheting down emissions with existing technologies-something that
Europe is finding to be both elusive and prohibitively
expensive-this approach focuses on developing the next generation
of energy sources that emit less carbon. Each nation would
determine when and to what extent these technologies should be
deployed.

This emphasis on technology is clear from the upcoming meeting's
agenda. Among the topics to be discussed are low-carbon generation
of electricity, vehicle and fuel technology, land use, and
efficiency improvements.

Conclusion
Critics contend that the non-Kyoto approaches to address climate
change are too weak to address the problem, but the track record
indicates otherwise. The Kyoto approach of curtailing
emissions-through onerous international regulation and
multilateral treaties with arbitrary, binding emissions targets-has
proven to be imperceptive, inflexible, and ineffectual. The reality
is that Kyoto nations are simply not reducing their emissions. By
contrast, emissions in the United States actually declined by 1.3
percent in 2006, a decline unmatched by most countries bound by
Kyoto.[3] One year of declining emissions does not a
trend make, but evidence is emerging that that the flexible
approach of the Bush Administration is more effective that the
ineffective, if not counterproductive, Kyoto approach.

Of course, an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol is an improvement
only if it avoids Kyoto's pitfalls. Such an approach must build
upon realistic commitments that countries are able and willing to
meet; must not undermine market-led economic growth and
development; and must be flexible enough to adapt to new evidence
on climate change and new technologies or strategies to address
acknowledged problems. The agenda for the Major Economies Meeting
on Energy Security and Climate Change seems consistent with these
principles. To the extent it avoids the pitfalls of Kyoto, the
agenda coming forth from the meeting deserves the support of not
only those concerned about climate change, but also those concerned
about the impacts of ill-advised climate change policy.

Ben Lieberman
isSenior Policy Analyst in the Thomas A. Roe Institute
for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Brett D. Schaefer is Jay
Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Margaret
Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby
Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage
Foundation.